%0 Journal Article
%@ 1098-1136
%A Charlton-Perkins, M
%A Almeida, AD
%A MacDonald, RB
%A Harris, WA
%D 2019
%F discovery:10081423
%I WILEY
%J GLIA
%K CRISPR, morphogenesis, Müller glia, transcriptome, zebrafish
%N 7
%P 1401-1411
%T Genetic control of cellular morphogenesis in Muller glia
%U https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10081423/
%V 67
%X Cell shape is critical for the proper function of every cell in every tissue in the body. This is especially true for the highly morphologically diverse neural and glia cells of the central nervous  system. The molecular processes by which these, or indeed any, cells gain their particular cellspecific morphology remain largely unexplored. To identify the genes involved in the morphogenesis of the principal glial cell type in the vertebrate retina, the Müller glia (MG), we used  genomic and CRISPR based strategies in zebrafish (Danio rerio). We identified 41 genes involved  in various aspects of MG cell morphogenesis and revealed a striking concordance between the  sequential steps of anatomical feature addition and the expression of cohorts of functionally  related genes that regulate these steps. We noted that the many of the genes preferentially  expressed in zebrafish MG showed conservation in glia across species suggesting evolutionarily  conserved glial developmental pathways.
%Z This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/